Muriel’s Chicken Recipe

Cookbook writing guidelines tell you that naming a recipe after someone is not a good idea: it doesn’t tell the reader much about the ingredients or the process, the reader doesn’t know this person, and frankly, the reader doesn’t care. This is all true of course, but I have a certain fondness for those recipes that sound like they were found in some old handwritten recipe book — la Carpe farcie façon Hortense, le Boudin du Père Thibault, le Pain d’épices de Célestine* — and although I promise not to make it a habit, I really wanted to name this particular dish after the person who inspired it.

A few weeks ago, Maxence and I spent a glorious day visiting friends of his mother’s in the Perche region, a two-hour drive to the south-west of Paris (less if you’re the speeding type). Le Perche is the essence of the French countryside — I’m pretty sure it is what the language guys had in mind when they invented the word “picturesque” — and as soon as we got off the freeway and started driving through the bocage (hedged farmland), I could feel my shoulders relaxing and my breaths deepening.

Muriel had slow-baked the chicken in one of those clay pots from Alsace and Germany called a Römertopf with whole garlic cloves, a quartered lemon, and fresh herbs from the garden.

Our hosts welcomed us warmly into their beautiful house — I want one just like that when I grow up — and a simple glance around the kitchen made me feel confident that lunchtime would bring very good things. And indeed, after a salad of perfect tomatoes from the vegetable patch (oh, the joy of living a cliché), we dug into the centerpiece of the meal: a farm-raised chicken so big it could have easily been admitted into some select turkey association.

The chicken came from a nearby farm, where one buys the chicks at birth and pays for their food, lodging, and education until they are plump enough to return the favor, at least for the food part. Muriel, the lady of the house, had slow-baked it in one of those clay pots from Alsace and Germany called Römertopf with whole garlic cloves, a quartered lemon, and fresh herbs from the garden.

Maxence took care of the carving (he seems to be the appointed chicken carver wherever we go, it is such a useful skill to possess) and the platter of chicken parts was brought to the garden table with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans, and a saucière (gravy boat) of golden brown cooking juices, in which the softened garlic cloves were paddling about, ready to have their pungent-sweet pulp smooched out and used as a condiment.

That chicken was hands-down the best I’ve ever had. Muriel was happy to share the recipe, and I soon reproduced it with my very own larger-than-life chicken bought from the farmers’ market, an organic lemon, pink garlic, and herbs that Muriel had snipped for us to take home (along with a few ceps, a crate of tomatoes, and a bushel of plums from their overloaded tree). I don’t own a clay pot yet — rest assured this will be fixed on my next trip to Alsace — so I used the largest of my cast-iron cocottes instead.

I have trouble deciding whether my chicken was as stupendous as Muriel’s — a dish that someone else has made for you always feels more magical — but it was pretty close, and I have a feeling that le poulet de Muriel will make frequent appearances on our menu. It is an extremely easy and foolproof recipe (since the chicken cooks in its own steam and at such a low temperature, there is no risk of it overcooking or drying out) and all you really need is good ingredients and time.

* These recipes are quoted from a book called Recettes gourmandes du Poitou-Charentes by Francis Lucquiaud, a collection of the author’s grandmothers’ recipes.

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